<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Happiness Patrol Coda: The Crooked Smile by DBC_82</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27389770">The Happiness Patrol Coda: The Crooked Smile</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DBC_82/pseuds/DBC_82'>DBC_82</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftermath, Classic Who Companions Are Awesome, Gen, Love, Post-Serial: s149 The Happiness Patrol, Serial: s149 The Happiness Patrol</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:41:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,904</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27389770</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DBC_82/pseuds/DBC_82</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>During a sleepless night onboard the TARDIS, the Doctor and Ace discuss love in the wake of their experiences on Terra Alpha...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Seventh Doctor &amp; Ace McShane</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Happiness Patrol Coda: The Crooked Smile</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="western">Somewhere deep within the fractal corridors of the space time vortex spun a blue contraption with the words Police Public Call Box  above the door. Though the box itself was buffeted along by the time winds, inside the craft all was still. In the darkened control room the Doctor stood quite alone, his hands resting on the console, his eyes elsewhere and unseeing. From a nearby room he dimly registered the sound of his companion crying out in her sleep.</p><p class="western">*****</p><p class="western">Ace awoke with a shout in a tangle of sheets, her brown hair tousled and her nightie dishevelled. For a disorientating moment she thought she was still back in the Candy Kitchen on Terra Alpha, tossing a white hot poker to the Doctor and hoping he caught the right end. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes Ace sat up and took stock off her surroundings. The TARDIS seemed to be half asleep as well, its roundels dimmed and the distant hum of ancient engines imperceptibly dulled. She decided to take a moment to shake off the nightmare.</p><p class="western">It was always the same, she thought. They'd spend a day or sometimes just an evening righting wrongs and casually overthrowing empires only to swan off without so much as temporal jet-lag to suggest they'd ever even left the TARDIS. The Doctor would throw the switch that closed the door and ask 'Where to next?' and that was that. It was Ace who'd go to sleep only to wake up hours later screaming a war cry as she brought her non-existent baseball bat down on the smooth polycarbide skin of a Dalek. She didn't even know if the Doctor slept let alone if he had nightmares, though if he did she had absolutely no desire to know what horrors featured in them.</p><p class="western">That said, he did always seem to know he'd catch the right end of the poker.</p><p class="western">On moving the TARDIS lights gradually increased their brightness and Ace decided that as she was up she'd go and see what the Professor was up to. If he really didn't sleep she'd at least always hoped to catch him doing something mundane like flossing or cutting his own hair, though the only time she'd ever actually managed to locate him after dark he'd been in the Library, sat lotus style and levitating two feet above the floor.</p><p class="western">Always with the magic, thought Ace.</p><p class="western">After wrapping herself in an old flannel dressing gown she made her way down the corridor to the console room and pushed the door ajar. The Doctor was stood hunched over the central console, his hat jammed as ever onto a mess of unruly dark hair and his back to both her and the door. Ace took a silent step inside and was unsurprised when the Doctor seemed both entirely aware of her presence and to have been expecting it as well.</p><p class="western">'Trouble sleeping?' he said without turning round.</p><p class="western">'No, I'm just awake.'</p><p class="western">'Nightmares?'</p><p class="western">'...No.'</p><p class="western">At this the Doctor turned to look at her, his eyes dark pools under the brim of his hat.</p><p class="western">'I do have a certain flair when it comes to nightmares, I could have the TARDIS telepathic circuits....'</p><p class="western">'No! I'm fine. Thanks,' she said, wondering what exactly the TARDIS's idea of a good nights sleep would look like. I'd probably go to sleep and wake up in a decade like Sleeping Beauty, she thought.</p><p class="western">The Doctor continued to stare and she shifted uncomfortably. She wondered again how her closest friend in the whole universe could sometimes make her feel so unsettled.</p><p class="western">'You seem out of sorts?' he said finally.</p><p class="western">'Sorry, it's nothing, time of the month. Are you alright?'</p><p class="western">Predictably the Doctor turned back to the console and found some obscure control to tinker with. After several moments and just as Ace had decided he'd obviously forgotten about her and it was time to go back to bed he answered her question without even turning to face her.</p><p class="western">'Helen A told me she punished her people for the good of the majority...'</p><p class="western">Ace stood silently waiting for what would come next. She'd seen the Doctor like this before, dark and full of doubts and she knew better than to interrupt him. He'd ask her opinion of course, even the magician's apprentice got a word in edgeways sometimes, but more than anything Ace knew that he needed her to listen.</p><p class="western">'Executions and death squads aside I asked her why she wanted to create a world without love, but I don't know if... I don't think I understand...' he tailed off and punched angrily at a button on the console.</p><p class="western">Ace almost laughed. Typical Doctor, the bad guys had been defeated again but there he is standing in the darkness agonising over his decisions.</p><p class="western">'Yeah but Doctor,' she said. 'You defeated her. No more death squads, no more oppression, and all in the space of a nights work, that's got to be some kind of record surely?'</p><p class="western">'Yes I defeated her. Like I do. I usually do. I took it upon myself to bring down her regime because of what she represented and what she did, and so I did what I thought was best. For the good of the majority...'</p><p class="western">Ace thought back to the end of their evening on Terra Alpha and shuddered. It had all been over by then of course, the Happiness Patrol had been unmasked by their hypocrisy and rendered powerless, the Kandyman had been reduced to the sugar-coated embers of of his endoskeleton, and the lift music replaced by the blues. All the apparatus of state systematically dismantled just in time for the first signs of dawn breaking in the distance. Yet still Ace felt uncomfortable as she thought about how she'd stood by the Doctor's side as they looked down on the broken, weeping figure of Helen A before them. She'd sensed a sort of emptiness in the Doctor then, something vastly alien and unknowable that had scared her more than any Dalek. Had he really not understood the reason for Helen A's tears, she wondered, as they'd stared down at the woman cradling the body of her only love? Apparently not.</p><p class="western">She stepped forward and placed a tentative hand on his back.</p><p class="western">'Thing is Professor, there's good and then there's right. What we did was right. Does it matter if you don't understand why?'</p><p class="western">'It matters to me!' The Doctor turned suddenly to face her. 'If I don't understand how she felt in what she was trying to achieve then how do I know that I'm any better.'</p><p class="western">'Of course you are! You're the Doctor and I'm Ace and we fight monsters and put the universe to rights. And maybe there's no such thing as living happily ever after but because of us at least they get to live.'</p><p class="western">Ace found herself suddenly angry. 'You always know what's right, hell you've normally spent the last three centuries planning it! If you don't know the difference between right and wrong then what chance have any of us mere mortals got.'</p><p class="western">The Doctor turned slowly away from her and avoided her gaze, his face in shadow again. 'But what about love?'</p><p class="western">She considered her answer carefully before replying. 'All you do Professor, the worlds you save and the people you help. If that's not love... I don't know what is.'</p><p class="western">The Doctor smiled and removed his hat, placed it gently on the oscillating column at the centre of the console and Ace wondered again how such a sophisticated machine could look so much like a souped up Amstrad. The Doctor put his hand over Ace's hand and she felt the warm touch of rough skin.</p><p class="western">'Thank you Ace.'</p><p class="western">Ace found herself smiling, 'What for?'</p><p class="western">'Oh nothing... just, everything. For being kind.'</p><p class="western">Ace yawned suddenly and remembered that she'd been asleep not fifteen minutes previously. Making a mental note to ask the Doctor again how that temporal jet-lag dampening actually worked she gave his shoulder a squeeze and decided to go back to bed. The Doctor seemed to understand and busied himself again with the controls. As she crossed the control room and pulled open the interior door that led to the familiar but bewildering labyrinth of the TARDIS interior she felt rather than heard the Doctor turn towards her again.</p><p class="western">'And what if I truly don't understand it? Love.'</p><p class="western">He asked the question so dispassionately that Ace momentarily found herself pondering the alternative. A life lived without love, travelling from here to there, never seeing, never knowing, just travelling ever on without really understanding. She'd been in love before right? Not mum, never mum, but she'd loved people. Hell for a while she thought she'd loved that handsome traitor Mike. She'd even loved Midge for a bit, the tormented idolising the tormentor, and oh, how that'd stung. Maybe she didn't understand love, not really, not yet. That meant at least there was hope for the both of them.</p><p class="western">'But that's the point isn't it Professor?'</p><p class="western">'Is it?'</p><p class="western">'Of course. If you understood everything the universe would be no fun whatsoever. Boredom city right? And anyway, for what's it's worth... I love you.' She said the words quietly, almost reverently, before finding her confidence once again. 'You're magic. And powerful and delightful and, oh I dunno... Like a supernova or a volcano. So just keep it up, eh?'</p><p class="western">The Doctor too three small steps towards her, his eyes still shrouded in darkness but shining nonetheless, his face suddenly inches from hers. 'Time for bed, you'll not have nightmares again I promise.'</p><p class="western">'How can you be so sure?'</p><p class="western">'Because you're right, there may no such thing as happily ever after, Helen A learned that and it proved to be her downfall. However...' The Doctor smiled again and it was a rare and beautiful thing. He took his index finger and gently touched her on the nose. '...there is such a thing as a good night's sleep.'</p><p class="western">******</p><p class="western">Sometime later the girl from Perivale was back wrapped up tightly in her duvet, beneath the funny patchwork blanket she'd discovered in a wardrobe somewhere deep within the bowels of the TARDIS, safe in her familiar wrought iron bed. Her eyelids flickered as she crested on the skin of a dream, half of her mind lost to sleep while the other half wondered.</p><p class="western">She knew there was no such thing as happily ever after, not really. She'd always been the little girl who'd scoffed at fairytales and watched Disney films while waiting with mounting frustration for the princess to start fighting back. Stories weren't real, happiness was subjective and maybe you didn't always need to start the fight; sometimes the fight found you anyway. All she really knew was that they did good. That's what she reminded herself in those dark moments when she was alone in the darkness. The Doctor and Ace, out saving the universe.</p><p class="western">So the little girl now all grown up slept soundly in her bed in the TARDIS because she knew the truth.</p><p class="western">Happy endings weren't always real, but the monsters were.</p><p class="western">And so was the Doctor.</p><p class="western">******</p><p class="western">Ace fell back into a deep and dreamless sleep as the TARDIS travelled on, twisting on improbable axes and tumbling through the infinite. Protected from the storm outside, the Doctor stood in silence at the heart of the machine, gazing out upon the vastness of the universe and wondering about love.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>